Hoar frost

HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone! Hope you are feeling really good this morning, if you were celebrating into the wee hours!

I want to wish my family and each and every one of my "local" friends, my long-time overseas friends, and my Flickr friends a very happy, healthy and safe New Year! It's hard to believe, isn't it, that 15 years have passed since all the fuss about the year 2000? Thank you all for your friendship and encouragement, and for letting me share my photos with you - SO much appreciated! I'm looking forward to another year of seeing where you have been and what beautiful things you have discovered!

This photo was taken on 16 December 2014, during the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count for the town of High River. It was such a glorious hoar frost that day, lasting for most of the day. The delicate crystals can form quite densely on branches, almost looking like snow.

"Under clear frosty nights in winter soft ice crystals might form on vegetation or any object that has been chilled below freezing point by radiation cooling. This deposit of ice crystals is known as hoar frost and may sometimes be so thick that it might look like snow. The interlocking ice crystals become attached to branches of trees, leafs, hedgerows and grass blades and are one of the most prominent features of a typical 'winter wonderland' day. However, the fine 'feathers', 'needles' and 'spines' might also be found on any other object that is exposed to supersaturated air below freezing temperature.

The relative humidity in supersaturated air is greater then 100% and the formation of hoar frost is similar to the formation of dew with the difference that the temperature of the object on which the hoar frost forms is well below 0°C, whereas this is not the case with dew. Hoar frost crystals often form initially on the tips of plants or other objects."

www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/wxfacts/Hoar-Frost.htm